IX.
When Taleena arrived at her cell, her meal was already waiting for her,
having been placed on the table by some unknown servant. For once, she thought,
she could enjoy her simple but healthful repast without the cloud of the
morrow's brutal drill hovering over like the sword of Damocles. As at the end of
every day of training, her body was wracked by fatigue, but she consoled herself
with the thought that she had completed the first week in good fashion. True,
her body sported many bruises, some fresh, some quite faded, but she strove not
to let her soreness spoil her satisfaction at having passed the first training
unit.
She took her time eating, savouring every bite of her meal which
consisted of a generous portion of cold meat, brown bread and olives, served
along with a jug of posca. After a short visit to the bathhouse, she returned to
her cell and undressed. As she pulled her well-worn blanket snugly around her
nude body, she once again heard the notes of the now-familiar ghostly flute
wafting across the darkness. She hummed along softly for a moment or two until
drowsiness overtook her.
She dreamt that night of stolen moments, soft kisses and sweet embraces
with her lover, Stertius, in the meadows and vineyards of her homeland. She
slept smilingly that night, and better than she had on any previous night at the
Ludus Flavianus, knowing that she would not be woken before dawn, to be prodded
around by a trainer intent on drilling her to the verge of collapse.
* * *
Taleena rose early the next day, as was her custom, noting that most of
the others had taken the opportunity of sleeping later than usual. "Carpe
diem," she said to herself, "seize the day", and she proceeded to do so by
treating her pain-wracked body to the soothing comfort of another bath. She
quickly donned her brief training costume and set off toward the bath house.
The yard lay quiet, kissed by the first rays of the rising sun. No
guards, no attendants, were on hand to spoil the goddess Aurora's morning gift
to the weary. The air was still damp and cool from the morning dew, and the
cheerful chirping of some warblers seemed to enhance, not disturb, the
peacefulness of the early hour.
Moving around the compound without the ankle-weights made Taleena feel
like she was walking on feathers and even this slight pleasure, one of the few
she had known in weeks, caused her heart to rejoice. She shed her clothes in
the changing room and headed straight for the tepidarium, so as to enjoy the
pool for once in blissful solitude.
She descended the steps of the pool until she stood on its bottom, and
the tenseness of her body seemed to vanish in the weightless ease of the waters.
She moved her arms to make wide, rippling circles in the pool, almost playfully
splashing about since there was no one there to reprimand her. She swam a few
lengths of the pool, and then, tiring a bit, she lay down in the water on a
ledge that jutted out from the side of the pool.
With her arms resting on the rim of the basin, her upper body was barely
covered by the shallow water, and only the tips of her breasts poked slightly
through the still surface of the water. Notwithstanding all she had been
through, her body had stood up well under the rigours of the past few days, she
mused as she arched her back, thus thrusting her breasts a little more out of
the water, studying the way the droplets clung to their crinkling aureoles.
Dreaming of her lost lover the night before had rekindled in Taleena a
long-latent sensuality which had been smothered in recent weeks by the
succession of ordeals she had undergone. As she closed her eyes, the rhythmic
lapping of the waves helped her mind drift away into an idle reverie. Almost
involuntarily her right arm slipped from the edge of the basin and her slender
hand slid downward across the golden skin of her sun-kissed belly. Remembering
the delicious contrast between the tender softness of Stertius' touch as well as
his virile strength, Taleena let her fingers brush gently through the downy
fleece of pubic hair, back and forth, stroking the tender folds of her
womanhood. Even though the insides of her labia were still tingling from the
cruel embrace of the Scythian torture strap, her stimulating touches soon
brought her body to a state of sweet arousal - a feeling which, during her long
days chained to the galley bench, she had feared she might never experience
again.
But the atmosphere of athletic physicality in the arena, the long days
surrounded by muscular, well-oiled bodies, and the omnipresent and taxing
corporal strain of the training sessions seemed to have unleashed a raging
carnal desire within her, as if the feminine essence of her nature sought
sensual compensation for all the rigours to which it had been subjected.
As Taleena's right hand teased the soft petals of her womanhood, her
left dipped below the surface of the water to cup the underside of her left
breast. She sighed with pleasure as her fingers slithered around the
water-immersed mound in sensuous circles, moving ever closer to her yearning
nipple but never quite touching it. Taleena slipped lower into the soothing
warmth of the water for a moment as her lips formed a trembling O. Then she
arched her back gracefully once again, causing her glistening globes to surge
out of the bath, wet and gleaming and aching with longing.
Her passion rising, Taleena murmured with dreamy pleasure as she
continued to stroke the rounded contours of her breast until the pink, puckering
crest at its center was clamouring silently for her attention. "Mmmmm," Taleena
gasped with delight as a teasing fingernail drew an ever-narrowing spiral around
the base of the swelling peak, before finally capturing it lightly between two
fingertips. She closed her fingers gently on the blossoming bud and tweaked the
sensitive nubbin until its neglected twin was aquiver with frustration, at which
time she rewarded her other breast for its patience by caressing it with equal
fervour, until both of her moist, coral nipples were bursting with desire.
Her gentle touches soon tempted her into more urgent caresses, and she
began to tease her clitoris with her finger, prodding the prominent, pulsating
button of nerves into an ardent erection. She moaned softly when she drew up her
knees and parted her thighs to slip one finger deeper inside herself, filling
her being with pleasure. A tremor began, rolling through her flesh, starting
high in her loins, spreading out in all directions, so sweetly painful that it
began to overwhelm her. Wave after wave of undulating spasms washed over her,
and her throat arched back while her mouth emitted a series of deep, guttural
groans until the final ripples of her shuddering orgasm subsided.
Taleena basked in the beguiling haze of arousal for a while, fulfilled
with pleasure and yet ashamed at the same time. The overpowering sensations she
had experienced troubled her since she had never thought that she could derive
such pleasure in this fashion, and she had been so oblivious of her situation
that her unbidden desire had overcome the need for caution. What if someone had
witnessed her shameless ecstasy?
Her heart missed a beat when she thought that she heard voices in the
changing room, and she listened closely to assure herself that it hadn't been a
mere illusion. No one had been there when she had abandoned herself to her
joyous journey - or had they? She tried to control her breathing, remembering
the tomb-like silence of the bath house when she had entered it, and she
wondered how she could have missed those warning sounds. Her face reddened with
a sudden blush as she remembered how strongly she had climaxed in the pool, and
she decided to leave the place as quickly as she could.
She had barely stepped from the pool - like Aphrodite emerging from the
waters - when a group of three elder fighters entered the tepidarium, two men
flanking the tall Nubian who had warned her of Byrria at her first day in the
arena.
On the black woman's right stood a grim Phoenician, a tall man whose
well-muscled body bespoke the menace of which he was capable, while his aquiline
nose, thin eyebrows and pointed beard gave his face a sinister cast. Taleena had
heard others addressing him as Hamilkar - or his epithet, Barkas. She had come
to the conclusion that 'Barkas' must mean something like 'flash' in his native
tongue, because the epithet was used primarily on occasions when his comrades
were referring to the remarkable velocity with which he could wield his
Carthaginian scimitars.
The man who completed the trio seemed to be of Levantine origin -
smaller in size than the Phoenician, but muscular nonetheless - and Taleena
remembered having seen him fighting with a long pole during the training hours.
A long scar extended from just below his left ear to the corner of a mouth, a
scar that had curled into an eager smile at the sight of her water-dripping
nudity.
Taleena was still glistening with water, and when she saw the men cast
an appraising look over her nude body, she felt ashamed, rather by the thought
that they might have seen her writhing in the pool than by her nakedness as
such. The cool water seemed to have drawn her already firm flesh to an even more
astonishing tautness, giving the flawless parchment of her skin a delicious
pucker, and she was well aware that her nipples were still treasonably stiffened
due to her recent sexual odyssey. But she quickly overcame the reflexive urge to
cover her modesty, for any such attempt would only have called attention to her
shame.
"That was fortunate yesterday," the Nubian addressed her, not nearly as
impressed by the sight of her nudity as her gaping comrades. "It seemed certain
that your back, too, would feel the sting of the lash." Then, with a hint of
gloating in her voice, she added, "I warned you that Byrria would try to take
you to task!"
"And I told you that I can handle her," Taleena retorted brusquely. "Why
don't you mind your own business?" She glared angrily at them, but her fit of
temper was in part at attempt to conceal her embarrassment at their sudden
intrusion, and to distract their attention from the blush she still felt on her
cheeks.
"You heard that, Tyra? - Our little novice thinks she can handle
Byrria," Hamilkar scoffed, while his ill-featured companion snorted a raucous
assent while his dark, greedy eyes leisurely lingered on the streamlets of water
running down Taleena's bold-thrusting breasts.
"Aye, Barkas!" the pole-fighter agreed, as he continued to let his eyes
wander freely over the ripe curves of Taleena's body. He scratched lazily at the
ridge of his scar as a dark grin stole across his ugly face. "Wouldn't it have
been a sight to see this one writhing under the lash? If Calixtus hadn't butted
in, I'd wager that this little braggart would have squealed as nicely as the
other one!"
Tyra didn't join in the coarse laughter of her two companions but
Taleena could see that the long-legged African was irritated by the way her
well-intentioned remark had been dismissed. Taleena regretted her arrogance the
moment the words had left her mouth. If they been alone, she would have taken
the time to apologize, but she was desperate to shield her nudity from the
oppressive gaze of Tyra's comrades and so she hastily grabbed for her towel and
set off for the massage room
* * *
Upon arriving at the massage room, Taleena found one of the Egyptian
masseurs re-arranging some phials of oil, while he waited for his first customer
of the day. Remembering her first visit there, she kept her towel wrapped around
her jutting breasts, not so much because she felt ashamed of her nakedness any
more, but because she had grown weary of giving the wide-eyed males of the
compound a free look. She lay prone on the bench, and recalling Tyra's
commanding tone toward the slaves, she tersely instructed the masseur where to
ease the tension in her back.
The man seemed somewhat daunted by her determined air, particularly
because she had been so docile during her first appearance, and Taleena was very
pleased with this change in his manner. She had begun to adjust to the
hierarchy of slaves at the fighting school and her successful completion of the
first week of training had helped to reinforce her burgeoning awareness that as
a fighter, she occupied a higher status than those whose duty it was to care for
her valuable body. As a recruit, she might have to cope with the harassing drill
of their instructors or the patronizing tone of the elder fighters - as she had
experienced just a few moments ago - but there was no need to let herself be
intimidated by slaves, however well-established, whose position in the social
strata of the compound was even lower than her own. This time, the brazen
flesh-toner would have to depend upon his memory or his dreams to enjoy any part
of her other than her back!
Taleena tried to unwind, and forget about her little clash with the
Nubian while the cooling effect of the massage oil asserted itself as the man
rubbed it gently into her flesh. But as a matter of fact, Tyra had been right -
she had been very lucky that her day off had turned out to be so agreeable.
Without Calixtus' interference, she knew, she would most probably still be
suffering from the burning sting of the cruel whip, rather than revelling in a
soothing massage.
Mewing softly when the masseur's skilled hands loosened up a spot of
knotted fibres, Taleena felt a pang of guilty conscience as the thought of Selia
crossed her mind. The poor girl was doubtlessly cowering in pain on the bed in
her cell, suffering from the aftermath of her whipping, deprived of the chance
of spending her free day in recreative leisure as Taleena had done. But she
forced herself not to dwell on the Spaniard's fate, for it reminded her of how
easily it could become her own. If her stint at the oars had taught her nothing
else, it had taught her the cruel lesson that one's survival sometimes required
one to pay little heed to the suffering of others.
X.
Aside from a short break at midday when she went out for a lunch of fish grilled
with leeks and onions, Taleena spent the rest of the day in her cell. Now and
then she heard cries of jubilation and curses of frustration from the outside
dining area where a handful of fighters rolled the dice across one of the tables
they had just dined on; but most of the recruits spent the day as Taleena did,
recuperating from the week's exertions in their sparse, but private quarters.
Lying on her bed, occasionally selecting a ripe red grape from a bunch
she had picked up in the dining hall, Taleena tried to remember how long it had
been since she had had some time for herself, to reflect upon her past - and to
wonder about her future. As she sought the answer to that question, her dismal
days of drudgery on the galley loomed large, so she let her mind drift even
further back, to happier times...
* * *
She had grown up on a small farm in the pastoral outskirts of Ludgunum,
an only daughter with three elder brothers. Julius Caesar had written,
generations earlier, that all Gaul is divided into three parts, and Lugdunum was
the capital of the 'three Gauls' as they were called. Growing up with three
boys, taking part in running, hunting, and all of the other vigorous sports of
childhood, had no doubt done much to strengthen her, both physically and
mentally for the tribulations that lay ahead.
Her father had been a tenant, as his ancestors had been, for
generations; but those years had been difficult times for farmers because the
demand for Avernian wheat was not it once had been. Many in that region had
turned their hands to pottery - Lugdunum's ceramic trade was known throughout
the Roman world - while agriculture drifted into a steady decline.
To compound the economic woes of her family, her mother had died not
long after Taleena had been born. By the time Taleena was in her mid-teens, two
of her brothers, despairing of the farm's ability to support them all, had
joined the Roman legions which had been dispatched far to the east to put down a
rebellion in that part of the world. Not long after the sons had left, her
father fell ill with a fever of the brain. He had been an invalid for many
months, during which time it had fallen to Taleena and her youngest brother to
till the land as best they could.
Fortunately their Roman landlord had shown some consideration for their
dire situation. The landlord was one Lucius Camillus Verus, a Roman senator
with a prosperous estate which straddled the Rhodanus, the river which rose in
the snow-capped mountains in Helvetia to the east and irrigated the fertile
valley around Lugdunum before flowing southward into the sea near the great port
at Massilia. Verus agreed to alter their tenancy, granting her father more
favourable terms, under the condition that the old man buy all of his seeds and
equipment from him. The offer was more than reasonable, but her father had been
unable to raise enough money to keep his side of the bargain.
Fearful of losing his land, and his sons' patrimony altogether, her
father with a heavy heart proposed that Camillus Verus, whom he knew to be a
respectable man, should take his young daughter as a household slave in exchange
for a sum that would preserve his tenancy of the farm and save the family from
ruin.
Camillus sympathized with the unlucky farmer and agreed to pay a
generous price for Taleena and promised to treat her well. Camillus Verus was a
Roman descended from sturdy republican stock, with an imperturbable faith in the
virtues and values which had long since made Rome master of the world - honour,
duty, family, country. Camillus had a strong sense of family, and was, as his
own father had been, a firm believer in education. He and his wife, Livia
Hortensia, had fathered two sons; the elder, Cornificius, was a military tribune
in the Second Legion which was stationed in Britannia. The younger, Aulus, was
still a boy of eleven, and Camillus had hired a Greek tutor, one Eudocles, to
provide his young son with the education and culture that a future aspirant to
the Roman senate would need.
For Taleena, her father's transaction had meant the formal loss of her
freedom, but save for her relocation to the villa of the Camilli, her life
remained largely as it had been before her father had taken ill. Her days
consisted of working in the kitchen, preparing meals, washing platters and the
like, and bargaining with merchants at the local market. She was grateful that
her new duties spared her from the long hours in the fields that her father's
poor health had made necessary, and she was free to visit her father and brother
whenever her duties permitted it.
Taleena tried to spend as much time as she could in the company of
Eudocles, the tutor of young Aulus. Late in the evenings, when Eudocles' eyes
grew weary from studying the many scrolls in Camillus' voluminous library,
Taleena would often suggest that he join her in the kitchen. The well-travelled
old man, a native of the Aegean island of Chios, had been quick to see the spark
of intelligence and curiosity in her bright blue eyes, and had been happy to
share the company of the friendly and attractive young girl.
While Taleena kneaded loaves of dough or cleaned vegetables, Eudocles
would sip from a beaker of vintage Falernian wine and tell her fascinating tales
of his travels. To Taleena's wonder, he seemed to know the realms that encircled
the sea that was 'in the middle of the lands' - the Mediterranean - as well as
he knew the library of Camillus Verus. He spoke of the peoples of Persia and
Asia Minor and North Africa, of the land of the Dacians on the Pontic Sea, and
of far-off Lusitania, which extended west and north of the Pillars of Hercules.
It was from Eudocles that Taleena had learned of the divinities and heroes of
Greece and Rome, from the time of the great siege of Troy down to her own time.
And she had listened with rapt attention as Eudocles recounted the stories of
Jason, Theseus and Odysseus, as well as those of Aeneas, Romulus and Remus and
the other heroes of Rome.
But of all his stories, the one that moved her most was the story of
Vercingetorix, the proud leader of her own people, the Avernians, more than a
century ago, who had united the Gauls and handed the immortal Julius Caesar his
first defeat, before being forced to surrender and taken in chains to Rome where
he had languished in the Tullianum, the death cell of the Carcer Mamertinus, for
years, before being executed. Taleena would reflect on the sad fate of that
bravest of all Avernian warriors many times during the coming months.
* * *
Taleena had been a tall, willowy girl of sixteen, with a pretty face and
a bewitching pair of blue eyes when she first set foot in Verus' household. But
during the ensuing three years she had blossomed into a voluptuous young woman
whose stunning body teased the eye and stirred the blood of every man at the
Camilli estate - and beyond.
Among her admirers was the estate manager, Stertius, a freed man a few
years older than herself, who was mature enough to manage the workforce of the
Verus estate, but young enough to have higher aspirations in life. Stertius was
a man of few words, but both Camillus Verus and Eudocles spoke well of him;
Taleena respected his seriousness of purpose and admired his stoic nature, and
she appreciated the small gifts that he offered her to gain her affection. It
could not be said that she shared the same kind of amorous feelings for him,
that he felt for her, but she felt safe and secure with him, and their
relationship protected her from the unwanted attentions of other men, both
freemen and slaves. She had given herself to him several months before the
catastrophe, and while he had proved himself to be a lover with more energy than
imagination, she had found their occasional hurried couplings to be satisfying.
Stertius had proposed marriage to her on her twentieth birthday, and her
master, Camillus Verus, had willingly agreed to confer his manu missio upon
Taleena, emancipating her so that she would be free to marry his deserving
estate manager. She and Stertius selected a date, some weeks hence, when
Eudocles was due back from a journey to Rome. Taleena was naturally delighted
to learn that her servitude was nearly at an end. Or would have been at an end,
if the Fates had not intervened...
Within a week of his promise to give Taleena her freedom, Camillus died;
he just passed away during the night while no signs had ever hinted on a weak
heart, leaving behind an almost hysterical widow, and a will which decreed that
the urn containing his ashes should be interred at the family's mausoleum in the
Campania. But there was nothing in the will about Taleena's manu missio, and
his wife, beset with the many difficulties that afflict a widow, felt no
commitment to honour her late husband's verbal promise.
Hortensia decided that she would accompany the body of Camillus on its
return to Rome for the funerary obsequies, and to secure herself a comfortable
pension for a life in the capital she determined that the Avernian estate of
her late husband would have to be sold as quickly as possible. With the noble
Camillus Verus not yet buried, it was difficult for Stertius to insist too
forcefully that his grief-stricken widow was obligated to honour her husband's
wishes; the best he could do was to secure from her a promise that he might buy
Taleena's freedom.
Unfortunately the price the widow proposed far exceeded Stertius' means.
While Stertius sought desperately to raise the money to secure Taleena's
freedom, the Fates decreed that none other than Balbinus the trader should
happen to appear on the scene - at the worst possible moment for Taleena, who
had been but a few days from freedom, marriage, and a comfortable existence.
Balbinus, an energetic man of commerce, had been an occasional guest at
the domus Camilli during his many mercantile journeys up the river Rhodanus. The
prosperous merchant had a certain oleaginous charm which, coupled with
occasional gifts of antique jewellery, sculpture, and the like that he had
acquired during his travels, had further ingratiated him to Camillus Verus and
his wife. But ever since he had first laid eyes on their nubile blonde
kitchen-slave some two years earlier, his visits seemed to increase both in
number and duration.
The hospitable domicile of the Camilli had seen many guests over the
years, but of all of its visitors, Balbinus was the only one who never failed to
make Taleena feel uneasy. Some eighteen months after she had begun service in
the house of Verus, the well-fed trader managed to talk Verus into granting his
wish that of all his house-hold staff, only young Taleena should wait upon him.
Balbinus' conduct toward Taleena herself was irreproachable whenever a third
person was in the room, but whenever his host was distracted or called out of
the room for a moment, Taleena felt the merchant's covetous gaze clinging to the
curves of her youthful body like a wet tunic.
On his last visit before Camillus' death, Balbinus had grown bolder than
ever. After pleading an indisposition and retiring to his room he had sent for
Taleena. When she came to his room, he asked her to re-fill his basin of water.
As she crossed the room somewhat apprehensively to retrieve the basin, he had
planted his massive body between her and the doorway. Sporting a satyr-like
grin, the merchant had proceeded to show the trembling slave-girl a number of
beautiful but scandalously filmy garments that he had picked up on a recent trip
to steamy Cyrenaica. Rubbing his fleshy hands together salaciously, Balbinus
suggested that she might have whichever ones she liked. She had only to try
them on, he said, in a voice infused with suppressed excitement, to make sure
that they fit her properly. Taleena had cleverly managed to escape his
attentions by concocting a story about needing to return to the kitchen to check
on bread in the oven, leaving the amorous, frustrated merchant fuming in the
doorway.
* * *
When Camillus Verus was stricken, Balbinus was quick to offer his help
to Livia Hortensia, suggesting that one of his commercial clerks would take care
of the sale of the estate, while he would ship the noble Hortensia, along with
the mortal remains of her late husband and the belongings she wanted to take
with her, down the Rhodanus to the port of Massilia, and from there it was only
a few days' sail first eastward and then southward to Ostia, the port of Rome.
In addition, he told the troubled widow, he himself would pay a steep price he
had suggested for Taleena, and he assured Hortensia that Camillus would have
wanted Taleena to be under the care of someone who was fond of her as he himself
was.
Hortensia was grateful for this most generous offer, leaving Balbinus
with only Stertius to deal with. The wily merchant quickly arranged for a
number of husky sailors from the Thetis to waylay the good-hearted
estate-manager and to beat him within an inch of his life, warning him that his
services were no longer required at the Camilli estate and that he had better
leave that part of the province unless he were anxious for a second, and
possibly fatal encounter with the crew of the Thetis.
In fact, after pretending to leave the area, Stertius returned
clandestinely a few days later, hoping to take Taleena with him to his native
Lutetia, but by then his intended wife was already en route from Massilia to
Ostia ...
* * *
The Thetis, a sturdy little galley of no more than forty oars, carrying
Balbinus, the mourning widow Hortensia, and Taleena, embarked for Rome so early
on the following day that the troubled slave-girl had no time to inform her
family of her departure. Not knowing what the sailors had done to Stertius, she
was angry with him, but that anger was nothing compared to the hatred she felt
for Balbinus, the fat, disgusting man who had used his wealth and influence to
destroy her life, ousting her future husband and separating her from her family.
Balbinus strove to placate his furious new acquisition by showering her
with gifts, trying to dazzle her with the opulent style of living she might
share if only she would submit to her designated role - as his willing hetaira,
or courtesan, a female trophy whose beauty, properly accoutred, would rival that
of any senator of Rome. Being seen accompanied by this stunning young blonde
would surely provoke the envy of his peers! He offered her fine clothes and
jewellery and allowed her to share the splendid meals he was served in his
cabin, but these overtures did little to allay Taleena's well-concealed
contempt, much less to mollify her wrath. She coyly accepted a few pieces of the
jewellery, not because she cared for it, but because it seemed to delude him
into thinking that he was making progress in subverting her will, and more
importantly because she knew that she would need something of value were she
ever to attempt to escape. But she steadfastly resisted his every advance,
sensing that the crafty merchant would remain patient during that leg of the
journey, for fear of offending the sensibilities of the patrician widow who
spent much of her time secluded in her cabin.
The Thetis reached Ostia in the late afternoon of the fifth day. Not
long after the small galley had moored, an alert Taleena noticed that Balbinus
was occupied making arrangements for Hortensia's inland journey and that the
crew was busy unloading his cargo. Seizing her chance, Taleena fled the vessel,
trying to lose herself among the throngs of sailors, porters, and tradesmen who
crowded the busy quay.
After putting what she thought was a safe distance between herself and
the Thetis, she came across a man wearing the telltale garb, the deep tan, and
the lined face of a skipper. After satisfying herself that he did indeed have a
vessel at his disposal, albeit one that barely looked seaworthy compared to the
Thetis, she offered the mariner a pair of golden earrings in return for passage
back to Massilia. The captain looked her over carefully, admiring the way the
costly fabric of her white tunic clung to the curves of her bosom. He examined
the earrings, and after satisfying himself that they were genuine, pocketed
them, and agreed to sail north in the morning.
But later that night the captain asked around a waterfront dive to see
if anyone knew anything of a striking young blonde woman who was attired in
beautiful clothing and wore expensive jewellery but spoke in the simple accents
of the Northern provinces. The innkeeper pointed out an unsavoury-looking pair
of crewmen from the Thetis, who had been prowling the harbour area all evening
in search of a runaway slave-girl. When the sailors mentioned that their master
would pay ten pieces of gold for the return of the fugitive, the mariner
betrayed her to the sailors in exchange for a share of the reward.
The crewmen, a small, beetle-browed Cretan and a Cilician with the nose
of a slow-footed boxer, surprised Taleena, who had been hiding in the hold of
the mariner's dilapidated vessel. The two men quickly overpowered her, pinning
her face down on the filthy grain sacks which were strewn around the hull of the
creaky ship. Taleena felt the Cretan's craggy hands, hard and dry from a
lifetime of battling the elements, easing the skirt of her tunic upward. His
callused fingers slid slowly up her supple thighs, savouring their softness,
before coming to rest on her hips. Ignoring her thrashing legs, her assailant
grabbed her snug-fitting loin-cloth and with a quick tug pulled it half-way down
over the ripe curves of her buttocks whose paleness seemed to reflect the moon
which lit them. He was just about to give the undergarment a second tug when
his companion stopped him. "Better not, Vinculus," the Cilician muttered
nervously. "The boss warned us about bringing back damaged goods."
The sailor's cautious manner of speaking made it plain that he was not
only afraid of the wily merchant, but also that he was deferential to the
intense little man who clearly was the more senior of the two. But, after
spitting out a vile sailor's curse, the one called Vinculus seemed to
acknowledge his comrade's reminder and relented.
"A sailor must take his pleasures when and where he finds them, my
friend," Vinculus muttered grimly, as he kneaded the sensuous curves of
Taleena's half-naked bottom. "Poseidon himself would be well-pleased with this
nymph!" he added with a lascivious chuckle. Then his face darkened. "But you're
right about Balbinus. If that fat bastard ever found out ..." and he gave his
companion a suspicious glance.
"So, I guess you get off easy, blondie. This time," Vinculus sneered in
a menacing voice, as his insistent fingers continued to fondle Taleena's springy
buttocks. "But by the trident of Poseidon, I wouldn't want to be in her pretty
sandals when we get her back to the ship, Symmachus!" the diminutive Cretan
confided to his comrade, before bending his body forward, ostensibly to whisper
to Taleena but in such a way that his lusty erection was pressed firmly against
the cleft which separated her bottom cheeks. Vinculus ground his body against
the long-legged blonde's rounded behind for a moment or two before growling in
her ear, "Cause if I know Balbinus, your sandals will be the last thing you'll
need to worry about, little one!"
Taleena was startled by his use of that sardonic appellation. Even
lying face down, she could tell that the stunted, ill-tempered man whose body
was pressed against hers, was a head shorter than she. But she had heard that
there were small men who took special pleasure in dominating taller women; and
this Vinculus seemed to be one of that twisted breed.
Taleena had assumed from the moment she had first heard it that
'Vinculus', meaning "the Roper", was not the malicious sailor's real name, but
rather an epithet awarded by his peers, and she quickly learned that the
sinister sobriquet was well-earned. While the broken-nosed Cilician held her
struggling body down, the Roper jerked her arms painfully tight behind her back
and then tied them so that the tips of her fingers touched the elbow of her
other arm.
The two crewmen then pulled their bound captive roughly to her feet, and
gave her plump buttocks a final squeeze before pulling up the loincloth. Then
they paid the perfidious mariner his blood money, and proceeded to drag the
struggling blonde beauty back to the Thetis in the middle of the night. Indeed,
the Roper and his Cilician sidekick took no further physical liberties with
their master's property, but contented themselves with a litany of lewd jests.
The Cretan's vulgar expressions of satisfaction with the way his behind-the-back
ropework had forced Taleena's shapely breasts into bold relief against the
clinging tunic were almost as repellent as groping hands would have been.
When they arrived back at the Thetis, the crewmen untied her and threw
her in a tiny cabin where Taleena spent a sleepless night dreading the
consequences of her abortive flight. Roman law and custom provided several
possible punishments for a fugitive slave, not all of them bloody, but none of
them pleasant. And the Roper's remarks about Balbinus' predilections did little
to ease her anxiety.
After the Thetis had cast off early the following morning, effectively
putting to rest any further thoughts of escape that Taleena might have had, the
wily Cretan sailor returned and unlocked the cabin telling her that she was free
to move about the ship. Taleena mounted the raised poop deck at the stern of the
ship and positioned herself at the rail beside the helmsman's shelter, squinting
eastward into an unseasonably warm morning sun. The brisk sea breeze which
billowed the greyish sail at the single mast of the ship tossed her long blonde
hair playfully about her shoulders, as she sadly watched the white-washed
buildings, and the verdant foothills of the Italian coastline recede into the
distance, and with it her hopes for freedom.
As Taleena pondered her sad plight, she heard the rhythmic thrashing of oars
cutting through the surface of the sea. She glanced forward to the prow of the
ship, along the twin lines of galley slaves who faced her as they pulled
stoically at the oars in order to propel Balbinus' proud vessel through the
waters. Again and again forty oars struck the water in unison, and the thrashing
blades churned the water to foam as the men put their backs into it, in the hope
of escaping the sting of the tasker's whip. But the tasker, a tall, muscular
Aethiopian, sat astern beside the pace-drummer, another African whose belly was
as round as that of his drum. The whip hung coiled at the tasker's belt, but his
mere presence seemed to be enough to spurn the slaves to the necessary efforts -
at least for the moment ...
Taleena shivered slightly and tried to put the thought of the doomed
rowers from her mind, when suddenly she felt a sudden gust of the western wind
seize the hem of her tunic, lifting it high on her shapely thighs. As her hands
reached down to hold the wind-whipped skirt in place, the too-bright sun forced
her to turn away from the rail, and she suddenly felt the gaze of Balbinus'
cut-throat crewmen washing over her curvaceous body like the waves crashing
against the streamlined bow of the Thetis.
"If she doesn't look as good in the sunlight as she did in the
moonlight, I'll row this tub to Alexandria myself, Symmanchus!"
Taleena spun around quickly to face the speaker, but she had recognized
the rude, rasping voice immediately.
Vinculus clutched a rope in one hand as his dark eyes continued their
unhurried inventory of the statuesqued blonde's face and figure, before leaning
back against the rail of the ship. "We may have to tie a few of the boys to the
mast, to keep them away from this one," the little man grinned crudely, as he
elbowed the young Cilician who seemed to follow him everywhere, like a seagull
follows a fishing boat, .
"Aye," Symmachus replied, smacking his lips with undisguised
relish as he watched the breeze whip Taleena's skirt around her bare legs.
"Like his crew did to Odysseus to keep him from chasing after the Sirens."
"The poor bastard! They should have tied the women to the mast and let
him have his fun!" the beetle-browed Cretan snorted, untroubled by the look of
revulsion that crossed Taleena's pretty face.
Although repulsed by his lewd remarks, Taleena could not take her eyes
from the sinister little man's gnarled hands as they flew over the length of
ship-rope he carried with the effortless ease of a lyre-player, fashioning one
intricate knot after another, even though his mind seemed to be elsewhere. It
was just as well that she could not fathom the sailor's thoughts as his dark
eyes navigated a slow course around her youthful body, while his nimble fingers
tightened the knots on his rope.
But the nature of his ruminations was not to remain secret for long.
"They say a woman on board ship is bad luck, Symmanchus," Vinculus growled,
addressing his comrade, but it was his lustful appraisal of the bare-legged
blonde that had turned his black-browed eyes into glowing embers. "But with
this one, I'd be willing to take my chances!" The Roper snapped a knot tight
with a quick jerk of his wrists as his eyes narrowed. "After all, we've got
some unfinished business, don't we, sweetie?"
* * *
The Cretan's indecent insinuations were cut short a moment later when
Balbinus summoned the apprehensive young woman to his cabin. Taleena trembled
in trepidation as she crossed the threshold into his quarters, but to her
astonishment the round-bodied trader welcomed her with a benign smile and took
her gently by the hand and led her toward a broad upholstered ottoman in his
cabin. After seating her alongside himself, the caftan-clad merchant continued
to hold her hand firmly in his sweaty palm while he offered to pardon her
foolish attempt to flee. Taleena had been surprised and relieved by this
unexpected turn of events and had just begun to relax, when she suddenly felt
his other clammy hand slide under the skirt of her tunic. It quickly became
only too clear that Balbinus expected her to demonstrate her gratitude for his
leniency. Taleena tried to pull away and forestall him, as she had done before,
with false smiles and falser promises, but he continued to hold her hand in a
damp but firm grip. With Hortensia now out of the picture, Balbinus was in no
mood for any further demureness or delay.
Balbinus had anointed his fleshy body with an excess of some musky
perfume in an attempt to please his intended conquest, and the cloying scent was
suffocating as Taleena tried to free herself from his grasp. The wealthy
trader's moist, stubby fingers explored the silky softness of her upper thighs
even as he pulled her body closer against his own. The blue-eyed slave-girl
tried without success to push away the intrusive, groping hand, but Balbinus
merely chuckled lecherously and pulled her roughly across his lap, twisting her
captive hand into a painful hammerlock and holding her squirming body down with
one well-fleshed arm, while his other hand slid the tunic up to her hips so that
it was free to roam up and down her sleek, sensual thighs.
Taleena struggled desperately to escape his obscene caresses, but her
every movement seemed only to further excite her obese oppressor. Lying prone
across Balbinus' lap she could feel his manhood pressing thick and hard against
her belly through his caftan, but when he loosened the hammerlock a bit she
managed to squirm free to rise from his lap. The corpulent merchant heaved
himself off the ottoman, too, but when he tried to re-seize her right hand
Taleena hit him in the face and raked her nails across his perspiring jowls.
Balbinus cried out in pain, and stirred to a powerful wrath by Taleena's
defiance, he returned the blow angrily, striking the struggling beauty sharply
across the face with the back of his hand. Though he was not inordinately
strong, the force of his blow knocked his bare-legged captive roughly to the
floor, her lip bleeding from the impact of one of the heavy golden rings he
wore on his fleshy fingers.
Still in the throes of the fury of a rejected admirer, the stout little
man was about to throw himself on the fallen woman and take by force what she
had refused to yield voluntarily, when an insistent pounding on the door stopped
him in his tracks. A shaken Taleena could only look on fearfully as Vinculus
and his Cilician companion from the prior evening, alarmed by the sounds coming
from inside the captain's cabin, threw open the heavy door and burst into the
room, compelling Balbinus to alter his plans slightly.
Breathing heavily from their brief scuffle, Balbinus ordered the two
ruffians to seize his prey. Eager to oblige, the pair of sailors pulled the
blue-eyed beauty roughly to her feet as her long, blonde hair swirled around her
shoulders in splendid disarray. Taleena could feel their foul breath on her
neck as the muscular guards pinioned her arms securely. The fuming merchant
wiped at his mouth, waiting for his henchmen to render the blonde helpless until
he stepped forward and grasped the azure-trimmed neckline of her beautiful white
tunic firmly in his fleshy hands. Then, with an almost bestial growl, he gave
the rich material a violent downward wrench.
Taleena's full, pale breasts bounced free as her bloated tormentor
pushed the torn fabric back over her soft, rounded shoulders, baring her to the
waist. Balbinus, his face flushed with desire, exertion, and the thrill of
conquest, took a moment to catch his breath while he admired his captive's
pink-tipped breasts as they bobbled enticingly as she twisted from side to side,
trying to escape the sailors' grip. A wicked smile formed on his lips as he put
his hands on Taleena's rounded hips and pulled the pale garment down until its
tattered remnants lay festooned at her feet.
Meanwhile Vinculus had grabbed a handful of her golden tresses and
jerked her head back painfully, quashing her resistance and forcing her
thrusting breasts forward for his master's pleasure. Taleena braced herself
reflexively, shamefully conscious of how Balbinus' piggish eyes were riveted on
her shuddering treasures. He ogled the creamy mounds hungrily with the
satisfaction of a merchant who had paid dearly, but was extremely well-pleased
with his purchase. Then his penetrating gaze shifted slightly before coming to
rest on the golden necklace which rose and fell on her heaving chest.
"Return the jewellery!" he commanded tersely, gesturing to the sailors to
loosen their grip. "I was a fool to offer an ignorant brat like you such
expensive trinkets. What do you know of the value of things?" he fumed. "By
Mercurius, you shall pay for those earrings! And you will pay the price of
defying Balbinus!"
As she stood before the raging man, naked save for a minuscule white
loin-cloth, Taleena felt a hot wave of shame welling through her body, a
tactile, tangible shame that seemed to suffuse her bare breasts with a warm,
rosy glow. No man save for her lover, Stertius, had ever seen her naked before,
and Taleena was mortified beyond words that this swinish little man and his
servile minions should do so now. But she had no choice but to obey. At a nod
from Balbinus, his men relaxed their grip on her, allowing her to raise her arms
to undo the necklace, blushingly conscious of how that movement lifted her
close-set breasts into ever more wanton prominence.
"I never asked for it!" she spat out, throwing the golden gift at his chest.
"I asked you for nothing!" She crossed her arms in front of her body to cover
her modesty, but Balbinus was in no frame of mind to be cheated of even an ounce
of pleasure. His thick lips curled into a depraved smile and he gestured to his
men to seize her again, and the loathsome duo took great pleasure in wrestling
her arms behind her back, thus thrusting the alluring fullness of her shivering
breasts to an even bolder relief against their taut and tender skin. The wiry
Cretan was directly behind her now and he pulled Taleena back hard against his
body until she could feel his stirring erection rubbing against her thinly-clad
buttocks.
Taleena flinched as Balbinus extended his hand toward her, until she realized
it was aimed at her face, not at her breasts. She turned her head away from him
in disgust, but could not evade his repulsive touch when he grabbed her roughly
by the chin, forcing her to meet his furious gaze
"Since my foolish generosity has been met with ingratitude, we shall have to
adopt other means to teach you the respect a slave owes her master," he uttered
menacingly, revelling in his dominance over his nude and helpless captive. The
goatish merchant wore a curious expression as he stroked her face, wiping at the
trickle of blood which had gathered at the corner of her mouth, and then sliding
a scarlet-stained fingertip over her full lips before letting his fleshy fingers
slide slowly down her slender throat. Taleena's blood ran cold as she felt the
merchant's practiced eye appraising her mouth and lips and throat as if she were
standing on the auction block at a slave market.
She was nearly as repelled by the unmistakable menace in his tone as by his
loathsome caresses, and even more so by the pluralis majestatis with which he
referred to himself. But the smug merchant's complacency only served to harden
her resolve to resist him all the more, and when she felt his fat, ring-covered
fingers come to rest on her left breast, she spat in his piggish face with all
the contempt she could muster.
Balbinus' eyes darkened in anger at this new offence, and he drew his right
hand back as if to slap her; but then he stopped in mid-air, wiping the stream
of her saliva from his cheek. Gazing with vicious delight at the panting young
slave-girl before him, he extended his thick-fingered hands again and rubbed
Taleena's spittle into the tender skin of her out-thrust breasts, squeezing
them, probing them, tweaking their tender nipples until they began to stiffen in
unwilling response
"The time will come when you will crawl to me on your knees, begging me to
touch you, slave," Balbinus rasped, his voice thick with lust and anger, as
Taleena squirmed in pain, trying to free her sensitive breasts from his painful
grasp. A purplish vein in his forehead throbbed obscenely as his meaty paws
tightened their grip. "When you will beg me to caress these lovely breasts," he
grunted, as Taleena moaned in pain. "Yes, my sweet, you shall," he continued
with gluttonous glee, reading her protesting glance, as he dug his manicured
thumbnails into the undersides of her coral breast-tips. "A taste of the lash
will teach you some humility!"
The lash! During her long sleepless night, the possibility of a flogging had
occurred to Taleena but she had tried to suppress the nightmarish thought. She
had once watched a careless maid receive a few strokes with a birch at the Domus
Camilli, and had heard the girl's anguished cries of pain. But aside from that
occasion, floggings had been nearly as rare as flying horses in the peaceful
world in which she had lived - but that tranquil existence was gone, perhaps
forever.
Balbinus' cruel fingers had brought tears to her blue eyes, but biting her
lip to keep from crying out, Taleena steeled herself for Balbinus' announcement.
If she must endure a few strokes of the whip, so be it, she concluded stoically.
But she would do her best to endure them with fortitude befitting an Avernian.
The great Vercingetorix would not have begged his Roman captors for mercy. And
neither would she.
But while Taleena strove to prepare herself mentally for the gruesome
prospect of being tied to the mast of the ship, of writhing under the sting of
the tasker's whip before a crew of lecherous sailors, she had reckoned neither
on the full extent of Balbinus' wrath nor on the perverse form of retribution
that the swinish merchant would employ to break the spirit of his rebellious
slave.
The scowling merchant's florid face was a mask of vindictiveness as he gave
her soft, creamy breasts a final vicious squeeze, before proclaiming his
terrible verdict:
"Vinculus! Find this slut a place on the rowing bench!"
